Offers Bring Family In From The Cold Job, Apartment A Blessing For 4 Who Had Been Sleeping In Car

January 28, 1986|By Sandra Mathers of The Sentinel Staff

Roy and Pauline Wells came in from the cold Monday night, perhaps for good. The homeless, unemployed Orlando couple who had been sleeping in their 1978 Buick with their 2-week-old baby, Roy II, and daughter, Karen, 2, have found a temporary home.

Orlando Realtor Frank Anderson, who read about the couple's plight Friday in The Orlando Sentinel, has offered the Wellses a one-bedroom apartment in south Orlando for two weeks.

Anderson, owner of First City Realty and Development Co., was one of more than 50 residents who deluged the newspaper with offers of shelter, food, clothes and money.

''It's a duplex apartment, nothing fancy, but it was vacant and I hate to see people like that go without,'' said Anderson.

Anderson's offer came in the nick of time for the Wellses, who had spent Monday calling the long list of offers. At 5 p.m., after making more than a dozen calls for shelter, Pauline still wasn't sure what she had.

''Some people sounded hesitant when I called,'' she said. ''Most had a room in their homes they said we could have if we didn't find a place.''

There were two exceptions, Anderson and Madeline Waldo, who has two rental efficiences behind her home in east Orlando. When Anderson tried, without success, to have the electricity in the duplex turned on late Monday, the Wellses agreed to spend the night in the heated, furnished efficiency.

''It broke my heart to see them sleeping in the car with a newborn baby,'' said Waldo, who also had read about the couple. She and her husband, George, operate a shipping business near their Goldenrod Road home.

The outpouring of public sympathy also brought Roy Wells what he needed most -- a job. On Friday he was offered a construction job on the Bumby Arcade at Church Street Station.

Pauline said her husband starts work today and has been promised a paycheck on Friday.

It was the usual two-week wait for a paycheck from a full-time job that Roy said kept him returning to the day-labor pools in recent weeks. Labor pool employees are paid daily and take home about $23, he said.

The couple's downhill slide into homelessness began in the spring when they moved from Kissimmee to Orlando in hopes of finding better-paying jobs. Roy, who said he had been laid off a good-paying job with an ironworks company, at first worked at odd jobs and collected unemployment.

Pauline fared better, finding a job with an Orlando company that makes fuses. Her paycheck, they said, kept them going. But complications with her second pregnancy forced Pauline off the job Dec. 6, leaving them with too little money for even the cheapest weekly rental.

She plans to return to work next month at the end of her six-week pregnancy leave.

Although the couple said they contacted several social agencies, none were able to help them find housing, even though they qualify for a federal emergency housing program.

Mickey Adams, associate director of the Human Services Council, an information and referral agency, said she will be working with the Wellses to help them find permanent housing with the help of the Federal Emergency Management Agency fund. The fund pays a month's rent for families that qualify.

In the meantime, there is Anderson's duplex. ''It sounds real good,'' said Pauline. ''It's someplace we don't have to keep moving from.''